The Rubble or Our Sins
by GreatBigFreak
Summary: Steve gets a call from FRIDAY to visit Tony on an important anniversary. Set post Age of Ultron, pre Civil War. Pre-slash. From the Tumblr prompt: "Imagine Tony finally telling Steve the whole story about Afghanistan." Warnings for descriptions of battlefield violence, meatball surgery and torture, and a canonical character death.


Warnings: Descriptions of battlefield violence, terrorism, meatball surgery, and torture. Pre-slash.

Disclaimer: All our Avengers are belong to Marvel. No profit being made here. No prophecy either. ;)

Timeline: Post Age of Ultron

* * *

 _"Oh where do we begin? The rubble or our sins?"_ \- Pompeii by Bastille

Tony was sitting on the floor of the penthouse, looking over at the Chrysler Building and beyond. Steve immediately noticed was his stillness. Tony was not one to stay in one place for very long. He was kinetic. His energy seemed to feed his next four movements as well as the present one. But now, Tony was seated in the middle of the floor, bare foot and in grease stained work pants. His knees where raised, and he had his elbows on them, hunched over. His hands were clasped tightly together, and his knuckles were white. The Tower, which had been teeming with life before the team had moved to the upstate facility, was deathly quiet now.

FRIDAY, the new A.I., had called Steve and asked for his presence at Stark Tower, and had mentioned pointedly that Tony needed someone human around. When Steve had asked about Miss Potts, FRIDAY had simply replied that she wasn't available at the moment.

"Tony?" Steve asked softly. Tony's head inclined toward Steve ever so slightly, but he didn't say anything in return. Lack of movement was one thing. Tony could be contemplating the mysteries of the universe as he did every so often, or running mathematical equations, or putting together the latest upgrades to the newest StarkPhone in his head. Lack of communication was another thing. Tony would bark about leaving him alone when he wanted or needed the space. No reaction other than barest acknowledgement was cause for concern. Steve approached, but Tony didn't look up, just kept on gazing out the window. The engineer was gaunt, pale, and thin. So much so that Steve wondered when Tony had last been outside of the tower. He gingerly set himself down on the floor beside Tony, and fixed his eyes on the horizon line.

"Nice day out there." Steve said conversationally, but he kept his tone quiet.

"Mmm" Tony replied. Just loud enough to be audible, and perhaps only to Steve's ever keen ears.

"What's wrong, Tony?" Steve asked, hoping that fortune would favour his boldness.

"Just... It's an anniversary... Of a sort." Tony mumbled. As he did, his hand curled in toward his chest, where the arc reactor had once sat.

"Well it's not Howard and Maria... That was closer to Christmas, wasn't it?" Steve asked. Tony froze for a moment, then blinked slowly and let out a sigh.

"Yes... Which is why I overcompensate with presents for the living people around me. So leave me alone about it this year, would you?" Tony said. His hand was touching lightly at his reconstructed chest, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Helen Cho.

"Sure." Steve said on reflex. Tony looked so miserable and lost that he would have agreed to anything to pick his mood up. "What is it the anniversary of, Tony?" He tried again, seeing as how asking outright hadn't gotten a violently negative reaction.

"Back in '08, I was in Afghanistan to do a live demonstration of a new missile that Stark Industries was developing." Tony's voice was softer than Steve had ever heard it before. Tony was brash. Tony was assured. Tony could be tender, and funny, and witty, and kind... And while Tony was damaged, could be hurt, Steve had never heard him sound broken before. He spoke in the hushed words of a desperate man, appealing to his god, or the universe, or anything, to change what was.

"The Jericho." Steve prompted in a whisper.

"Yeah." Tony said in a quick breath.

"Anything I can do?" Steve asked. Ever the helper. Tony smiled for a moment, but as he did, tears leaked out of the corners of his eyes.

"I never... I've never wanted to talk about it before." Tony said. He gazed out over New York in its rancid splendor.

"But you maybe do now?" Steve asked quietly.

"Maybe... I... I think someone else should know who he was... Should know how I was saved. I realize that now. No one gets through alone. No one. If you try, you die. If you say you can, you're a fucking liar." Tony said, and his chin dropped to his chest and he closed his eyes against a few more tears. He brought his knees further up, and pulled his arms around them.

"Amen to that." Steve said. "Together. Remember that, Tony?"

"Yeah." Tony said, his voice rasping, as if his arms around his legs was the only thing fending off complete emotional collapse. "Yinsen." He said in a rush. "His name was Yinsen... And before that, three fucking kids who just... Just wanted to serve their country. Were proud to be Americans anywhere on the planet... Died trying to save-" Tony took a long breath, and let out three sharp sobs with his face pressed into his knees. Steve's eyes went wide. Without thinking he leaned forward, got his feet under him, and gathered Tony into his arms.

"Okay" Steve said. "We're just moving locations. Gonna take you to the couch. I got you. You're safe. It's okay, Tony. I'm here." Tony didn't fight him, but he didn't help Steve's effort to get Tony off the floor. Steve cradled Tony and moved over to the couch. He set both of them down gingerly on the cushions, and tried to get Tony to cling to him instead of curling in on himself again.

"It was just... so fucking pointless. Oh god." Tony said. Tony's eyes were open, but they were clearly seeing some other scene. Steve nudged Tony's head down and under his chin so he could feel Steve's pulse. "Pointless. It's been seven years, and Afghanistan is still a fucking mess. Sure, they're not blowing up huge pieces of it anymore, but the warlords and terrorists still run rampant. Fuck, did you read that book by that Malala girl? I'm still cleaning up weapons there. While we were still reeling from what Loki did, she was getting shot in the head... A little girl..." He rambled breathlessly.

"Tony, take a deep breath for me please." Steve said. Tony gasped in air on reflex, thinking of the time that JARVIS had pleaded for him to do the same thing in order to save his life. "Good. Another. More slowly this time." Tony did as asked, and it came out as a shuddering exhale. "Good. That's good Tony... Start at the beginning if you think you can. What happened that day?" Steve asked. Tony took a few more long breaths in through the nose, and out through the mouth, a learned relaxation technique.

"I... A weapons demonstration is usually just an exercise in the military measuring its collective dick. Rhodey was the weapons development liaison at the time. It... was supposed to be in and out. Go in, wow the generals, and watch them start slapping each other on the back like they'd designed the Jericho themselves... It was supposed to be easy. Safe, even. But on the way back to the airstrip..." Tony stopped and took another measured breath.

"The kid beside me in the back of the Humvee, couldn't have been more than 22... He still had acne to go with his sun and windburn. He wanted a picture with me... Jesus, this was just the time when phones started to come with cameras as a standard option."

"It's okay, Tony. I'm still kind of amazed by it." Steve said. Tony let out a few beats of high laughter, the kind that bordered on manic. Steve took note that Tony's iron grip around his knees had started to slack. Tony sighed, but not the actual calming type, more of a spacer to gather his thoughts, and then the words came out in a jumble again.

"He wanted a picture... With his shitty little digital camera that he probably had to drop a good chunk of his paycheck on, because he wanted to remember... And I still can't remember if the photo ever got taken, and it if did, what happened if his effects were sent home to his wife... Or mother. Fuck. Me and him as the last photo on the memory card... Fuck... Can you imagine what his family would have gone through? The kids wanted to know which cover models I'd slept with as a joke. The driver was a female soldier with phenomenal cheek bones, and laughed when I flirted with her and pointed it out... I was just trying to get them to relax, and they were. They were so young, Steve. Babies. Younger than you when you and Bucky signed up."

"Tony you've got to keep breathing." Steve murmured. "You won't ever get it out if you don't breathe." Tony shuddered against him, and finally threw an arm around Steve's neck and shoulders, hanging on tight. "What happened after they pulled the camera out?" He asked softly, in order to keep Tony's mind from sticking on one point.

"Landmine... The military said the road had been cleared. But it was planned, and there was a lot of money behind the plan. I was the target. The terrorists, The Ten Rings, were paid to kill me. They might have succeeded if I had stayed inside the vehicle, but their ammunition was piercing the side of the Humvee like buckshot through paper. All those kids, got out one by one, into the line of fire, and bits of their brains and faces ended up on the windows..." Tony said and swallowed hard.

The memory on the Helicarrier of asking Tony harshly if he'd ever lost a soldier came roaring back to Steve's mind. Tony standing over the browning bloodstain that Coulson's sacrifice had left on the wall, in a cold, numb state of mourning that came to people who knew too much loss but weren't allowed to express it. Steve had learned later how many encounters Tony had had with the man. Coulson hadn't been just a soldier. Not by a long shot. Tony's pained, panicked outburst suddenly made sense. _"We are NOT soldiers!"_ And if Steve hadn't felt like shit about that before this moment (he had), it was infinitely worse now. Steve held Tony a little more firmly, tears building up in his own eyes now.

"I got out, ran behind what little cover there was, and you know the joke about there being a bullet or bomb with your name on it? True story. Happened to me. One of my own weapons landed a few feet from me. I ducked, but there... wasn't time. Wasn't enough cover. I was wearing a flak jacket... But..."

"Your chest." Steve said. He was glad that Tony's file had at least covered the basics of what he'd been through. The details, however, were new to him, and be damned if he interrupted Tony's catharsis. Tony let out a few silent sobs against Steve's chest, balling Steve's shirt up in his fists, the grip that of a strong man who worked with his hands, and not a corporate CEO or head of R&D. He made the conscious decision to breathe, and Steve felt Tony's heartbeat start to slow down.

"The next thing I remember is the pain, and the cold, and the dark... I'm not sure if you've ever had open-heart surgery with little more than ether to keep the pain away... Do you know what ether does to you, Steve? You might, you're from a time period when they still might have had to use it... Hunter S. Thompson... He was a journalist of a sort... Heavy into drugs. You'd have hated him. But he did describe the effects of ether very well: _"_ _It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel ... total loss of all basic motor skills: blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue-severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally ... You can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it. A total body drug. The mind recoils horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column."_ You see, Steve? I remember it. I passed out from the horror of what was being done to me eventually. But I remember Yinsen rooting around in my chest... Cutting away my sternum and ribs... And I couldn't do anything but scream."

The recitation of someone else's words had calmed Tony to a numb state. Steve gave up. Tears fell from his eyes. These were memories not even fit for a battlefield. This was beyond what should have happened in the theatre of war. "Oh my god, Tony." He whispered into dark hair.

"Don't... Don't lose it on me now, Steve. I'm not done. Not by a long shot... You were the one hero I had growing up, until Howard soiled my love for you... But underneath all my bitter anger, I always believed you were a hero... I can't handle it if you freak out on me right now. Please. Steve." Tony said, hushed and desperate. Steve sniffed and took a long, deep breath. He wasn't going anywhere. He would stay to the end. If Tony could live through it, the least Steve could do was listen and understand.

"Okay." Steve said. "Okay, I'm here. I got you."

"I think it took me at least a couple of weeks to wake up... Everyone forgets how long The Ten Rings had me. No one asked what they did to me, at least no one I actually cared to talk to. I told the military psychologists to fuck off. I can't stand when someone assumes they're smarter than me... Rhodey tried, but I wasn't ready, and he got busy, and I was desperate to appear that I was okay afterward. I had SI to run after Obie... I tried talking to Bruce awhile back, but as he freely admitted, he doesn't have the right temperament for that kind of listening..."

"I imagine not... I'm sorry that no one noticed. I should have looked more closely." Steve said. His calm was steady and purposeful now that Tony had pulled it together a little.

"No Steve. You weren't even awake yet... I am an adult... I should recognize when I need help... I woke up to the sight of my own breath. A cave tends to take on the yearly average temperature, which feels a lot closer to winter than summer. I remember... There was a nasogastric feeding tube up by nose... Pulled it out in my confusion. Nearly threw up. Then I noticed the bandages on my chest, and the weight in my chest conducting the cold right down inside of me. I started pulling them away... It... I didn't always have the arc reactor tech, Steve. I had to invent and build it there. Yinsen... He's the one who operated on me. And it might seem like torture, but he saved my life. He was a genius in his own right. But he's not me, and the resources were limited... He hooked an electromagnet up with a few feet of cable, to a car battery, in order to keep the shrapnel from piercing my heart. My torso was hamburger. I built weapons, and I did it with ruthless efficiency. There was only so much he could do. The Ten Rings didn't want me for long, just long enough to convince me by any means necessary to do what they wanted."

"How did they do that?"

"Held my face underwater, just far enough that the water would catch on the connections of the battery and magnet and shock me while I was drowning... I can take a bath or shower now at least. But don't ask me to put my head underwater. And no swimming if I can't see the bottom." Tony admitted. "I tried to refuse, Steve. I honestly did... But I was drowning. They were drowning me. I was so scared. I wanted to die, but I was too scared to just let them finish it. When I thought they were going to, they just pulled me back out."

"No. No no no." Steve murmured. "You are not a coward for doing what you had to in order to survive."

"Captain America wouldn't have cracked so easily... I cracked so fucking easily." Tony said. His voice was rough and tired from crying. Steve nudged the top of Tony's head with his chin to get his attention.

"A few things. One: Captain America is kind of ridiculously strong, and can take on more guys than you in a fight because of hand-to-hand combat training. Two: Captain America doesn't know how to build weapons of mass destruction, all he's got to offer is some clues to Erskine's work, so he's more valuable in one piece and not for his knowledge. Three: Captain America doesn't like his head going under dark cold water either, Tony... And four: you didn't crack. Don't you see? You escaped. More than that, you took a lot of them out of play in doing so."

"But I didn't do it right. It was a mess. It all went to shit. I couldn't-"

"Shh, it's okay. We'll get there. First, what did they want from you?" Steve murmured.

"The caves were where they were stockpiling munitions. Mostly from Stark Industries. The shock of it, seeing them all stacked up like that. It's like having your knees cut out from under you. Everything that I thought I had ever done to help was doing less than nothing. It was actively endangering the lives of the people I wanted to help keep safe... And there are eyes everywhere in Afghanistan. It only looks like nobody lives there. They knew about the Jericho. From the demonstration, and possibly from the source they had inside the company that was doing backdoor deals."

"Who was the inside connection, Tony? You've never really said." Steve asked.

"Obadiah Stane. Obie... Uncle Obie when I was a kid. He was the CEO who was chosen by my father to run things, until I was old enough to take the company. I adored him, Steve. Sort of. He was the father figure and big brother I never had... But he was a douchebag too. Tried to repress things about me he didn't like. Tried to mold me into what he wanted... He found out about my affair with a handsome male fellow doctorate student when I was finishing up at M.I.T., and went apeshit on me. Covered it up. Blamed my booze habit when whispers of it emerged... He wanted me dead so he could take SI. Hired The Ten Rings to do it and provided the gear. But then they got greedy. They wanted more money for finishing the job. When Obie refused, they settled on trying to get the Jericho out of me instead. I didn't find out it was Obie behind it all until after I escaped though. Pepper and a journalist helped me piece it together." Tony said. His grip on Steve's shirt had loosened, but he showed no signs of wanting to put any distance between them.

"If you had a car battery hooked your chest... How did you escape?" Steve asked, mindful and quiet.

"I made the first miniaturized arc reactor in the world out of the palladium and other materials cannibalized from missiles they had. I was pretending to build the Jericho, because as I said, I cracked. I said I would do anything if they would stop putting my head under the water... I knew they were planning on killing me whether I built the missile or not. I'm not a complete idiot. Yinsen knew it too. We were both trying to buy time, because they were only keeping him around to keep me alive. Not that he was fond of the job at first... But... He... I met him before, you know. Once. I don't remember it. But he did. New Year's Eve, heading into 2000. I was at a tech conference in Bern. I barely acknowledged him. He said he didn't mind, and admired my ability to be that coherent talking about integrated circuits while simultaneously being as drunk as I was... How much time have I wasted?" Tony said, and finally his body went mostly limp. Steve held Tony firmly against him though.

"I think you make up for it in pretty remarkable ways." Steve said softly.

"But what if I didn't waste time? What if I had had a better plan to get out? Yinsen might be sitting in some cushy job that I would have given him no choice but to take. I would have brought him back Stateside, you know? He wasn't afraid to call me on the state of weapons production at SI. He'd seen firsthand what my hands had wrought. They called people, who had shrapnel in them like I did, walking ghosts. It would break up so fine, that it would take a week for it to pierce vital organs. Agonizing damn way to die... And now I know firsthand... But he, he convinced me to live. Saw that while I was the problem, I had the power and influence to put a stop to it if I survived. He convinced me that even if I didn't really have much to live for, that I should live, because no one else could create any change in the area... I asked him that if I had a week to live, why I should bother. He just said it was a very important week for me and left me to make my choice. He was my almost apathetic guardian angel. He was so fucking tired of his people living like they had to..." Tony sniffed loudly to clear his nose.

"And now I am too. Look at that sweet, fierce, girl Malala. All she wanted was to go to school. They tried to deny her that, tried to shut her up, get rid of her, and she just dug her heels in. She's created more positive change in area of awareness than I've ever done, and she's barely college age... We think of these places as wastelands, and of the refugees that come out of them as human garbage. None of us wants to say it out loud. But we do. We forget that these people are just as remarkable, just as kind, just as compassionate as we are, if not more so because they have so much less than we do. And all because they don't speak English, and probably aren't white, we don't want to acknowledge they exist... I can only imagine what Yinsen could have helped me do if he didn't die. It was all just so... wrong." Tony let out a real sigh now. The breath went to the very bottom of his lungs, and out slowly. Steve could feel his heartbeat slow down further. But it came with a look of haunted sadness on Tony's face.

"How did he die?" Steve whispered.

"He let me get to know him. Told me about his family. I told him about my lack of one. He said I was a man who had everything and nothing... I let him put the first arc reactor and housing in my chest. I started working on the Mark I. I figured it was the best way to get us out of there. Just walk out in an armored suit, ya know? When Raza figured that we were stalling for time, they came into where we were being held, pinned Yinsen down, and threatened to shove a hot coal from the fire into his mouth. I claimed I needed him, his steady hands... Said he was a good assistant. Couldn't appear to be too emotionally attached though, or else they would threatened him again. Raza gave us hours to finish the Jericho, so we scrambled to get the Mark I together... Yinsen was just strapping me into the suit when the guards got suspicious. He set everything up for it to come online with that slow ass, shitty, DOS based 486... Couldn't even get a Pentium in those caves..." Tony muttered. Steve ran his left hand up and down Tony's back slowly to give him an anchor point in reality.

"We had barred the door, and then they knew something was up. They blew it in but we managed to have it booby-trapped and it blasted the guards out of the way... And then Yinsen... That idiot... That..." Tony's face crumpled down into Steve's chest. "He grabbed an automatic rifle from one of the dead guards, ran ahead while the suit gathered the final charge it needed... I was trapped in the suit, waiting, hoping... Praying it would work and that I wasn't prematurely strapped into my coffin... Thankfully, it did."

"That was the longest walk of my life, all flashes of gunfire, and the noise... The gunfire. The screaming... The air got colder as I got to the surface. I kept looking for him, but it was too late for Yinsen. I found him at the mouth of the cave, bleeding out on top of some sacks of rice. Just a few steps from freedom. I can't help but think that if I had worked a little faster, that he would still be here. I could show him how grateful I am to him... I begged him to hang on. Told him he had to see his family. It was then that he told me that they had all been killed by The Ten Rings, and that he planned it that way, to get me out, and to die so he could see his family again... I managed to thank him for saving me at least. His last words were "Don't waste your life, Stark". So I walked out of the mouth of the cave and set off every piece of weaponry I could see... And I'm still cleaning it up this long after. The Ten Rings might be scattered to the wind, but they're out there still. I should have done more by now." Tony said.

"You know that that is probably logistically unfeasible for a single human being to do, right?" Steve said gently.

"Of course I do... But that's how I feel. It's not rational. It just is." Tony said. He started to pull away from Steve, who renewed his grip around Tony.

"No, you're not going anywhere, Tony. I said I got you. I got you... How long has it been since someone held you without an ulterior motive?" Steve asked.

"A long time... Maybe not since Rhodey found me after I escaped. The explosion was big enough that the military started patrolling the area again. He figured that if something went boom that loud, I must be involved. I've never been so happy to see anybody in my entire life. All the strength went out of me when he ran over the sand toward me. I just collapsed against him. But it was good. It... felt like this sort of does." Tony muttered at the end. Steve's expression brightened a little.

"I'm glad. I want you to know that I'll always do my best to be there for you, Tony." Steve replied quietly. Tony's head turned to the side, the emotional connection too much to bear for a moment.

"Pepper left me. Said me working as Iron Man was bad enough, but me trying to stop was worse." Tony said, tensing up again.

"I... sort of figured by the way FRIDAY spoke. We're going to pack you a bag or five and take you out to the facility for a bit. I feel the need to nurture you and feed you up like my mom used to do to me. Maybe get you out into the sunshine too." Steve said.

"I have work... The board-" Tony said, mind trying to shift gears back to reality already.

"-Is headed up by Pepper. Who left you. She can fucking handle them if you need some time." Steve said.

"Language." Tony mumbled.

"Really, Tony? Now?" Steve asked. Tony slacked against Steve again.

"I haven't make it easy for her, Steve. I'm quite certain this is all my fault. And SI is a multibillion dollar business. Vacations are rare."

"Did she make it easy for you?" Steve asked quietly.

"I suppose not." Tony admitted.

"Then a little bit of the fault is on her too... Please come. It's not a vacation. It's accumulated leave for grieving. Rhodey is dying to see you. And Vision's mentioned wanting to talk to you, but he thought you might resent him."

"I do. A bit... God, I miss JARVIS. I... When I was scared to rely on anybody, I could rely on him."

"I think there's more of JARVIS in Vision than he's willing to admit to us. His concern for you is noticeable. He's... Pretty incredible to know... And I have to assume those parts that leave me in awe came from JARVIS, meaning ultimately they came from you... Come back with me. No need for Iron Man if you don't want. Just Tony and his need to be around people who care, to get him through a rough patch. Because we do care about you. We miss you... And I want you to tell me what happened with Obie. The official record isn't accurate I'm assuming."

"No. No, it is not." Tony said.

"But only if you want to talk about it... If you do, I'm willing to listen. I want to be here for you. I am here for you." Steve said.

"Thanks, Steve... You've got no idea how much that means to me." Tony murmured.

"The sad thing is, I sort of think I do. Loneliness doesn't work for people like us. We have to stick together to get through everything. It's the only way we'll survive." Steve placed a kiss in Tony's hair.

"Steve... Don't open that can of worms. You might not want to see what's inside." Tony said, and raised his head to look into Steve's eyes.

"The not so sad thing is, I sort of think I do... But not right now. That's not the sort of distraction you need... You going to come back with me? Stay for a few weeks? Maybe longer?" Steve asked, finally really smiling though his red-rimmed eyes.

"But there are bugs up there." Tony whined in an attempt to lighten the mood, to push out of his mind that Steve had probably just made a pass at him. Because holy shit was that every teenage fantasy he'd ever had, and he didn't want to associate that with some of the worst memories of his life.

"Not as many this time of the year. Besides, you could invent a device to keep them away. Could be a thing for SI to fight malaria around the world. It's research. Might even keep your CEO off your back." Steve mused. "We could also talk to Rhodey and Sam about taking a look into terrorist cells in Afghanistan as well. You can ask us for help, Tony. You don't have to do it alone. It's a noble thing to attempt. Of course the Avengers would want to help with that."

"I'm bringing Dummy and installing FRIDAY there." Tony said as he rolled his eyes. "I'll need someone intelligent to talk to." Steve broke into that kilowatt-generating smile he had and part of Tony melted.

"Fucking fantastic." Steve said.

"Language, Rogers."

"Goddammit, Tony." Steve said and shook his head. His smile remained intact though.

-End


End file.
